Taking Names

The sound of music

Put film directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in a room together with composer-conductor John Williams and add a fleeting glimpse of Tom Cruise with wife Katie Holmes, and it’s Hollywood on the Potomac all over again. That was the scene Sunday at the Kennedy Center Spring Gala, celebrating “The Art of Film Music,” a formal dinner and concert to raise more than $2.7 million for the institution’s coffers.

Donating their services for the occasion, a solemn Mr. Scorsese and a jaunty Mr. Spielberg acted as hosts to introduce familiar themes from well-known films, played by the National Symphony Orchestra under Mr. Williams’ direction along with the NSO’s outgoing music director, Leonard Slatkin.

The evening ranked as a love-in among the talented crew, frequent collaborators and Academy Award winners through the years. “I can direct bicycles to fly, but music really makes them soar,” Mr. Spielberg said of Mr. Williams’ Oscar-winning score for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” from 1982.

Miss Holmes and Mr. Cruise — he is a good friend of Mr. Spielberg’s and has appeared in films for him and Mr. Scorsese — were merely spectators, ushered in and out of the Concert Hall as though they were Fort Knox gold.

Paternity confirmed

An attorney says a DNA test confirms that James Brown fathered the son of a woman who claimed to be the singer’s wife when he died in December 2006, Associated Press reports.

Peter Shahid, an attorney for James Brown II, said Friday that the boy was tested in April before a South Carolina judge ordered a paternity test. The results of the court-ordered test have not been released. The boy is the 6-year-old son of Tomi Rae Hynie, a former backup singer for the “Godfather of Soul.”

Trustees handling Mr. Brown’s estate have suggested that Miss Hynie was not legally married to Mr. Brown and that her boy is not his son. They are not mentioned in Mr. Brown’s will.

A call to a spokesman for Miss Hynie and a message left for Mr. Brown’s trustees were not returned, AP said.

Muti to lead CSO

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association yesterday named Riccardo Muti as the next music director of the CSO, the 10th conductor to hold the prestigious post.

The post has been vacant since Daniel Barenboim retired in 2006, AP reports.

Born in Naples, Italy, Mr. Muti, 66, first led the CSO as a guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival in 1973 but didn’t return to Chicago until last year. He has been a regular guest conductor at the Salzburg Festival since 1971 and is regarded by many critics as an outstanding Mozart interpreter.

In the United States, Mr. Muti is best known for his work as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980 to 1992. During his tenure there, traditionalists objected to his deliberate stripping away of the lush high-Romantic “Philadelphia sound” made famous by the late Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy. Supporters, though, praised Mr. Muti’s leaner sound and said he often came closer to composers’ original concepts.

Mr. Muti’s most prestigious appointment, as music director of Milan’s La Scala, began in 1986 and ended when he resigned in April 2005 amid bitter controversy after artistic and programming differences with the opera house’s former general manager, Carlo Fontana, led to open conflict with the musicians after Mr. Fontana was dismissed.

Oprah, Ray A-OK

Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey’s BFF, says there’s no feud between O and her protege, Rachael Ray, TMZ.com reports. “I know that’s not true,” Miss King said — disputing recent tabloid headlines — when she appeared on Miss Ray’s TV show last week.

Compiled by Ann Geracimos and Robyn-Denise Yourse from staff, Web and wire reports.